


The Hungry Pig

by mldrgrl



Category: The X-Files
Genre: Angst, Developing Relationship, F/M, season 6
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-11-05
Updated: 2016-11-05
Packaged: 2018-08-29 06:01:38
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,295
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/8478046
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/mldrgrl/pseuds/mldrgrl
Summary: Mulder is finally forced into attending a team building workshop and the results are eye-opening.  Set during mid season 6.





	

Mulder tried everything he could think of to get them out of the team-building seminar, but nothing worked. Skinner even went so far as to tell him if he even thought about calling in sick, he better be calling in dead, because that was the only excuse he’d accept. He couldn’t even accidentally miss a flight because the seminar was being held in DC.

 

He was running a little late the morning of the seminar, perhaps a little intentionally. He stopped in the office first, but Scully wasn’t there. When he tried her cell phone it went to voicemail. He searched frantically through the pile of files on his desk for something that could potentially require immediate attention, but came up empty. He had no choice but to bite the bullet and head over to the Marriott Hotel.

 

Fifteen minutes later, Mulder was checked in for the seminar and was handed a nametag, a pen bearing the logo of the company conducting the seminar, and a paper folder with the agenda. He was destined to spend the next six hours in agony. Maybe he could start a Hangman tournament with Scully to pass the time.

 

Mulder searched the crowd from the back of the room for Scully. Mostly everyone was already seated and one of the seminar leaders had just started an introduction. His partner was easy to spot among the sea of fellow agents. Her red hair stood out like a beacon. She was at a table near the front, of course, once a teacher’s pet, always a teacher’s pet. There were no empty chairs anywhere near her. The realization that she hadn’t saved him a seat was a bitter pill to swallow.

 

There was plenty of room at the tables at the back of the room. He dropped his folder onto one and crossed out the ‘Fox’ on his nametag with his new pen before he slapped it on his chest. According to the agenda, the first fifteen minutes would be spent giving a brief overview of what they would be learning that day. He doodled a sketch of Bigfoot in the corner of the paper as the lecturer droned on. Even though he was no artist, he was pretty pleased with how it turned out.

 

He was working on a scene on the back of his sheet of a UFO levitating a cow into its gravitational pull when he heard Scully’s voice and he picked his head up to pay attention. She had already stopped talking, but the lecturer was nodding in agreement. He wished he knew what she had said.

 

Mulder turned his alien abduction drawing over and checked his watch. Per the time and agenda, they could either be on the ‘cohesive unity’ or ‘trust’ sections.

 

“...and it’s not just partnerships,” the lecturer said. He was a tall, thin man with wire-rimmed glasses and an unfortunate receding hairline. “You can think about any relationship you have, whether friend, family, co-worker, et cetera, as a piggy bank. Every positive interaction you have with that person adds to the piggy bank, and negative interaction withdraws from the reserve. Sometimes your piggy bank might be bursting with positive experience, other times it might be so empty you’re in an emotional deficit. That’s where the problems start.”

 

Mulder could see Scully’s head bob in agreement. He frowned and loosened his tie just a little. He understood what the man was saying, but he really wanted to know what Scully had said before that. He decided he would have to start paying attention just in case something else came up he needed to know.

 

They broke for a half hour lunch before the afternoon session. Mulder had tried to be more attentive, but his mind started to wander again during the “creative problem-solving” section. As the agents filed out to partake in the free sandwiches and fruit platter selection, he lingered in his seat to wait for Scully.

 

“Mulder?” she said, a look of genuine surprise on her face when she spotted him and broke from the line to come to his table. “What are you doing here?”

 

“Mandatory, right?”

 

“Yet you were determined to find a way out. I thought you must have succeeded.”

 

“Just a little late.”

 

“I guess I should...I’ll go get my notebook and move back here.

 

“You want to chaperone me? Think I might sneak out while no one’s looking?”

 

“It’s been known to happen.”

 

“You asked something earlier, but I couldn’t quite catch it. What was it?”

 

“Didn’t catch it or weren’t paying attention?”

 

“You wouldn’t know, but the acoustics back here are lousy.”

 

Scully folded her arms across her middle, a gesture Mulder knew she made when she was chagrined or introspective. She nodded softly and looked down at her feet for a moment.

 

“It was more of a comment than a question on fluctuating levels of respect and trust in partnerships.”

 

“Oh.”

 

“Dana, you coming?” a female voice asked.

 

Mulder glanced over Scully’s shoulder and she twisted at the hips to look back at an agent he thought he recognized as a lab consultant in ballistics. Scully lifted her finger up and nodded. “I’ll be right there,” she said.

 

“Looks like you have a lunch date,” Mulder said.

 

“Agents Phillips and Wyler asked me to join them,” she said, turning back to him. “Would you…”

 

“Nah.” He shook his head. “I’ll catch up with you later. And keep your seat. You don’t want to be stuck back here with the bad acoustics.”

 

Scully hesitated and then she nodded at him and turned away. He watched her catch up with the other agents she’d befriended and he sat back down in his seat. Soggy sandwiches and mushy fruit didn’t sound very appetizing and besides, he’d lost his appetite anyway.

 

In the afternoon, they were broken up into small groups of ten for a demonstration on communication breakdown via a game similar to Telephone. Mulder participated, albeit half-heartedly, and restrained himself from sarcasm. The agents in his group weren’t so terrible and at the very least, they got in a few laughs during the game. He wasn’t about to hold hands and sing kumbaya with anyone, but he could safely say that he was capable of playing nice when he had to.

 

Throughout it all, his mind was on Scully and what comments she made that he still didn’t know. It hadn’t been a banner year for them. Being separated and taken off the xfiles was a big part of it. Fighting about the work and about Diana Fowley was probably the biggest low. He knew there remained some tension between them, but he hadn’t really known how to get back to where they were. They’d had the files back for a few weeks now, but it wasn’t the same.

 

The seminar ended with a round of applause and Mulder left before it even died down. He didn’t feel like being subjected to any mingling or small talk with anyone and his only obligation was to have attended the seminar, nothing further, which he did. It had given him some things to think about, and now he wanted to be alone with his thoughts.

 

*****

 

Scully was only mildly annoyed when there was a knock on her door. It wasn’t terribly late, but she’d just finished dinner and had yet to do the dishes. She checked the peephole before unlocking the door and letting Mulder in. She was surprised to see he was still in the suit he had on at the seminar. When she’d stopped back in at the office after the workshop, he wasn’t there.

 

“Mulder?” she asked, eyeing a shopping bag in his hand. “What’re you doing here?”

 

“Is it a bad time?”

 

“No. I was just about to do the dinner dishes.”

 

“You want help?”

 

Her suspicions were raised by the offer. He must want something. Well, he’d have to wait. “No,” she said. “You can go sit down, I’ll be right in.”

 

She left him to fend for himself while she washed the dishes. She couldn’t remember the last time he’d stopped by. Between the reassignment and the rift that had formed in their partnership, it had been awhile. She had unfortunately grown accustomed to having her Friday nights and weekends to herself, which she knew wasn’t meant to last.

 

“Okay, Mulder,” she said, coming into the living room to find him patiently waiting on her couch. The shopping bag he’d been carrying earlier was in his lap. “What’s this about?”

 

“Getting right to the point,” he said. “I like it.”

 

Pushing himself closer to the edge of his seat, Mulder opened the shopping bag and took out a clear, plastic piggy bank and put it on her coffee table. He opened up the pig by separating the top from the belly and then sat back. He reached into his coat pocket and pulled out a wad of dollar bills and then angled himself towards her. She watched him do all this with a cocked brow, wondering what he was doing.

 

“So, that seminar today got me thinking,” he said. “I know I’m not really your favorite person lately. I would like to fix that, but like that guy said, it’s more difficult to _re_ build than to build from scratch.”

 

Scully shifted uncomfortably on the couch. Neither one of them were very good with their feelings and she hoped he didn’t think an impromptu heart to heart was going to solve some of their deeper seated issues.

 

“I took a look in our piggy banks and wondered if the problem was that they were too low,” he said. “So, I’ve got fifty dollars right here. If we can fill manage to fill it up, I’ll take you to dinner.”

 

“Sounds like bribery,” she murmured, toying with the cuff of her sweater.

 

“I like to think of it as incentive.” He smiled at her, but then his face turned serious. “So, money goes in for every positive experience and money goes out for every negative one.”

 

“I don’t know if this is a good idea.”

 

Mulder chuckled and then scratched the back of his head. “Could it get any worse?”

 

“It could.” She nodded, staring at her knees. “It could become irreparable.”

 

“Is the deficit that large, Scully?”

 

There was fear in his eyes and she hated to see it. She sighed and moved forward to the edge of the couch to match Mulder.

 

“Okay,” she said. “What do you want me to do?”

 

“Might be good to start out with something positive?”

 

“Something positive between us?”

 

“Yeah. I’ll start. When I woke up in Rhode Island and couldn’t remember where I was or how I got there, you came for me right away, no questions asked.” He put a dollar inside the belly of the pig and then looked at her expectantly.

 

Scully bit her tongue on a reply. Finding her partner in a strange motel room with bloodstains in his rental car and mysterious holes in his head was not a positive experience for her. Perhaps it was a perfect example for how perspective can cause conflict. She picked at her fingernails for a few moments.

 

“Mulder, you realize that while you appreciated that I was there for you, the reason I had to be there in the first place was because you knowingly put yourself in danger without even telling me where you were going or what you were up to.”

 

Mulder scratched his cheek and swallowed. He took the dollar back out of the pig and put it on the stack of bills he’d placed on the table. “Back to square one, then,” he stated.

 

“You were up front with me about what the xfiles meant to you the very first case we had,” she said, before he had the time to start brooding. “You told me about your sister and your quest, even though I knew you didn’t fully trust me.”

 

She picked up the dollar Mulder had rejected and put it back in the pig.

 

“Right after you showed enough trust in me to believe I could be right about the marks on those kids’ backs.” He bumped his knee softly into hers. “Even if they were mosquito bites.”

 

“Those sound like two separate positive experiences to me.”

 

Mulder happily put another dollar into the pig. “Your turn,” he said.

 

“I don’t think I ever told you how grateful I was that you kept my mother informed of the progress of the investigation when I was missing.”

 

“But if you'd never been involved with the xfiles in the first place you wouldn't have been abducted, right?”

 

“I've never blamed you for that,” she said, putting the dollar in the pig herself. “Maybe you should stop blaming yourself.”

 

“Would it help?”

 

“If it means you won't try to protect me from the work, or assume my personal investment in the files is about you, yes.”

 

Mulder took the dollar Scully had just placed in the pig and put it back in the stack.

 

“What was that for?” she asked.

 

“You're referring to the disagreement we had at the Gunmans’ lair. That wasn't pleasant for either of us.”

 

“No, it wasn't.”

 

Only minutes into whatever this game was and they'd already broached one of their touchiest subjects. This was the kind of thing she was afraid of and was unsure about where it would take them emotionally.

 

“You once told me you would put your career on the line for me,” he said, putting the dollar back in the pig.

 

She breathed out a small sigh of relief but there was tension in the room. She picked up a dollar and dropped it in the pig. “Thank you for helping me retrieve Leonard Betts’ head from biohazard waste.”

 

Mulder grimaced. “I'm tempted to take that dollar right back out,” he said. “Digging through body parts was not exactly pleasant.”

 

“You lived to tell the tale.”

 

“True. And, speaking of, thank you for calling me first when you got your diagnosis.”

 

Scully sucked in a sharp breath and gave a vague nod to acknowledge it. She stared at his hand as he dropped his dollar in and left her eyes on the pig instead of looking up for her turn.

 

“That case with the kindred, I was so embarrassed that I’d put myself in the position to be affected by Brother Andrew, but you didn't judge me for it.”

 

“You trusted me enough to come into that storage locker in Alaska just to prove I wasn't infected with Arctic worms.”

 

“Was that really about trust?”

 

“For me it was.”

 

“That time you remembered my birthday.”

 

“I always remember, Scully, I just rarely acknowledge. Makes it more special.”

 

She had to laugh at that. “I liked dancing with you at the Cher concert.”

 

“I liked dancing with you too, Scully.” He smiled and his hand hovered over the stack of bills. “Does that mean we can add two dollars for that one?”

 

“Why not?”

 

“How much can I get for my trek to Antarctica?”

 

The smile faded from Scully’s face. She would forever be in his debt for going to such lengths to save her, but it brought to mind the conversation in his hallway just before the bee sting.

 

“Scully?” Mulder looked worried all of a sudden.

 

“I don’t know.” She shook her head. “Five dollars. Ten dollars. Whatever you want.”

 

“What’s wrong?”

 

“I guess that it just seems that whenever you say something nice to me, you want something.”

 

“What do you mean?”

 

“My one in five billion. Your strict science and rationalism have saved me.”

 

Mulder’s mouth flopped open and then his lips came together and whatever he was about to say got stuck in his throat and caused his Adam’s apple to bob up and down. He pushed himself up from the couch and laced his hands behind his neck as he paced in front of her window a few times.

 

“There was something about perceived reality today,” he said. “That...perception is a lens through which reality is viewed and everyone wears a different lens. When I’m grateful for you coming along to rescue my sorry ass, you see it as my fault for getting myself in that mess in the first place. What I see as opening up a little of my heart, you see it as manipulation. I...I don’t know what to do with that.”

 

Scully looked down at her hands. “I didn’t know that’s what you saw it as.”

 

“Well…” Mulder shrugged and rubbed the back of his head with his linked hands. “I mean...if you think I don’t believe in those things I’ve said to you and that I’ve only said them with an agenda...I’m...just...sorry for that.”

 

“Honestly, I don’t think I believe that. It’s just how it feels, sometimes.”

 

Mulder sat back down on the couch and thumbed through the money in the piggy bank. “Six years and all we have between us is ten dollars,” he said.

 

Scully took a handful of the bills on the table and put them in. “For Antarctica,” she said, and then put another single dollar on top of the pile. “For coming here tonight and wanting us to be better.”

 

Once she started, she couldn’t stop, putting dollar after dollar inside as Mulder watched in silence.

 

“For coming to San Diego when I said I need you, no questions asked. For respecting my need to work when my father died. For finding ways to involve me in your cases when we were separated and the xfiles were shut down. For not leaving me behind when you wanted to chase suspicious tanker trucks across Texas. For not blaming me when I pointed my gun at you when those microwaves made me susceptible to subliminal messages. For not being angry with me when I shot you in the shoulder.”

 

“It was just a flesh wound,” Mulder murmured.

 

“No, it wasn’t. How many is that now?”

 

“Counting the inflated Antarctica incident, twenty-six.”

 

“I think the reality is, Mulder, we have much more than that. I’m sure there are so many little things we won’t be able to think of even if we sat here all night.”

 

Mulder slipped another dollar into the bank and then another and another. “For calling me out on my bull shit when I need to hear it. For singing to me in the middle of the forest. For going to my father’s funeral when I couldn’t. For not walking away from me after our first case, even if it was only because it was out of duty or obligation. For still being here six years later.”

 

Scully counted out the singles he laid down and added them up to thirty-one. “It’s a good start,” she said.

 

“I’m gonna go,” he said, standing. “You keep the pig. Tell me when we get to fifty and we’ll go someplace nice.”

 

She stood as well and followed him towards the door. “Mulder, come here,” she said, catching the cuff of his jacket and giving it a tug. He stopped and she put her arms around him, cheek to chest, and squeezed him gently. He put his arms around her as well and she felt the deep breath he took and the sigh that followed.

 

“I’ll see you Monday, Scully,” he said, pulling away from her.

 

“See you Monday.” Impulsively, she stood on her toes and kissed his cheek. He gave her a questioning look and a half smile and then he was out the door and she slid her chain lock in place behind him. And to think he thought team building workshops to be a waste of time.

 

The End

 

 


End file.
